Control and monitoring systems for systems such as lighting systems are known. Such systems can be used to turn light fixtures or luminaires on/off and monitor for basic performance, e.g., current drain, cycling conditions, number of on/off cycles and the like.
Lighting systems are often designed in accordance with standards established by the Illumination Engineering Society (IES) which is an international body of lighting engineers. The standards describe appropriate lighting levels or lumen output levels that a lighting system should provide. The light level or lumen output that is recommended by the IES varies in accordance with lighting applications, e.g., indoor, outdoor, playing field, parking lot, etc. For street lighting the standards consider type of roadway (residential, freeway, feeder or collector, etc) as well as activity level for both vehicles (possibly included in type of roadway) and pedestrians (referred to a pedestrian conflict level).
Lighting systems cover large geographic areas and consume large amounts of energy in the aggregate. The large geographic areas contribute to high maintenance costs since a technician often has to visit the location of each light fixture and these visits may need to be timed so the fixtures are operational (i.e., night time or off hours). Furthermore the large geographical areas can contribute to the impracticality of metering energy usage of individual or even sets of fixtures, thus resulting typically in estimating usage.
Lighting systems and constituent components of light fixtures have a life expectancy and operate differently with differing output light levels or lumens over that life time. Lighting engineers realize this and typically over design systems such that they are producing lumen outputs well in excess of the recommended levels during much of their life expectancy and appropriate levels only during later phases of their life expectancy. This further contributes to large and often excessive energy consumption.